It's probably fair to say that the 3D revolution hasn't panned out exactly as James Cameron envisioned. Avatar was released over two years ago, so by now you would have thought that cinema would be awash with similarly high-reaching 3D epics. But no. Instead we've got a tidal wave of ropey conversion jobs, an increasingly suspicious public and the very real threat that 3D will have caved in on itself by the time Avatar 2 gets released.

This could be the reason for James Cameron's recent decision to dementedly prop up all of 3D by himself. Last year he executive produced Sanctum, a kind of 3D subaquatic spelunking drama that was notable only for Cameron's involvement – something the movie's posters picked up on by ensuring that his name was more prominent than everything other than the film's title. Later this year he'll re-release Titanic in 3D, partly because it'll be the centenary of the disaster and partly because it might be cool to watch a load of people drown in 3D.

And now James Cameron has unveiled the third prong in his campaign to save 3D forever, and it might just be the most nefarious of them all. You see, James Cameron will soon be presenting us with Cirque du Soleil Worlds Away. It is, as you may have guessed, a 3D film about Cirque du Soleil, the tedious Vegas acrobatic troupe who dress up as moonbeams and twirl around to Jean Michel Jarre and the sort of music you can buy in garden centres.

It's being directed by Andrew Adamson and distributed by Paramount, but ignore that. The thought of Cirque du Soleil joining forces with James Cameron – a man who makes films about tree spirits and lets Celine Dion make Enya noises over his closing titles – is too horrifying to contemplate.

Announcing the film, Cirque du Soleil's Jacques Méthé said "This 3D event brings the spectator beyond what they could see at a show, it takes them on the stage. This unique point of view allows the audience to discover the artistic details of our productions and reveal the human spirit that our artists bring to the audience in their performances". If you managed to get to the end of that quote without dying a little inside, you're made of sterner stuff than me.

Digital 3D has visited to some peculiar places in recent years – from the adventures of Belgian cartoon characters to inside French caves to adaptations of erotic 17th-century Chinese novels – but Cirque du Soleil Worlds Away feels like a giant leap backwards. It sounds like it's going to be the sort of thing that you'd go and see at an Imax cinema back in the dark days before it started to show real films.

Surely James Cameron's vision for 3D involved immersive worlds, groundbreaking visuals and the introduction of an enduring new cinematic grammar. But instead he's got a load of French-Canadian blokes in leotards twirling around on bits of ribbon to the sound of some ambient whalesong. Avatar 2 can't come soon enough.